Gamers and Heroes

The video gaming industry has had it’s fair share of video gaming heroes, right from the early days of Sonic the Hedgehog, or Mario and many more, all the way up to the delightful Miss Lara Croft and beyond.If I were to even start listing all the well known heroes and characters from the best loved video games, this would be more like an encyclopaedia than an article, the list is that big. Instead let’s take a look at a small selection of some of the biggest heroes in video gaming history, and take a peek at how they have influenced our lives.

Film to video and video to film
I don’t think you can take a look at video gaming heroes without mentioning the influence and interaction with the film industry. I’m sure most would agree that there has been some great film action heroes that have wanted the same success on video games, but most have failed miserably.

However, there have been some notable exceptions when viewed the other way around, that is, games making it onto the big screen, such as Lara Croft-Tomb Raider (starring Angelina Jolie) and Hitman (starring Timothy Olyphant – who also starred in Die Hard 4). I just want to mention, I thought the Hitman film was a particularly good film. I also went to see Final Fantasy(animation) at the cinema, and thought the film makers did a very good job on that too.

Heroes

Sonic the Hedgehog
Everyone’s favourite blue hedgehog. Sonic became such a success, people are still buying the original games today, in the form of ‘compendiums’. Sonic was cool, great graphics for it’s day and addictive gameplay, the sideways scrolling platformer won the hearts and minds of millions of gamers around the world. I can still remember the music that rather monotonously repeated itself throughout the game.

Snake
The first ‘sneak-em-up’ to hit the consoles. Metal Gear Solid defined a new gaming genre, and it’s leading character Snake became a huge success. He was cool and dangerous and hid in cardboard boxes. Who still remembers the guards response when he passed Snake if he was hiding in one?

Lara Croft
Ah, Miss Lara, where art thou? When Lara exploded onto the consoles, many gawped at her huge assets and fine figure, but let’s be honest, the gameplay was great too. Her unlimited pistol power, her agility to climb and swing from one ledge to the next, not forgetting the excellent puzzles and maps that gave the game much longevity. Lara didn’t always ‘perform’ to expectations however, a lot of the magic seemed to have been tarnished in subsequent games, and only recovering briefly in ‘the last revelation’, where she found herself exploring the Egyptian tombs.

Sam Fisher
To me, Sam Fisher was the cool version of Solid Snake. Maybe not as charismatic, but Sam got to use all the modern gadgets you could hope for. Splinter Cell offered all the ‘sneak-em-up’ action that Metal Gear Solid did, but without all the boring cinematic story scenes to wade through. Sam was cool, he sported a ’5 oClock shadow’ (pun intended), and as long as the lights where out, he was one of the most dangerous espionage agents ever to grace our consoles.

The Master Chief
When Halo 3 was released in the autumn of 2007, there was much hype and fanfare, and with good reason. The game was superb and built upon the previous Halo successes. The Master Chief became one of Xbox’s biggest heroes, not just demonstrated by the massive financial returns, but the Master Chief found his image everywhere tea-shirts, mugs and other paraphernalia. More than one million people played Halo 3 on Xbox Live in the first twenty hours, and the action is still growing strong today.

Gamers and their Gaming heroes
No doubt we love our gaming heroes and the adventures they lead us on. What is perhaps frustrating, is when the developers ‘loose the plot’ and try to build on the success of their first outing with a particular hero, but straying too far from the path that made the character and game so successful in the first place. But we forgive those developers for putting us through such pain and torture, should they realise the error of their ways and ‘return to the fold’ in the following release.

Many such loved heroes have suffered from this ‘developer foggy-brain syndrome’ such as Sonic; and in my opinion never really made it successfully onto the 3D platform, 2D just worked, as it did for the Street Fighter series. Tomb Raider and Splinter Cell suffered from this syndrome too, though it looks as if Splinter Cell will recover somewhat with the forthcoming title: ‘Conviction’.

When all is said and done, we enjoy good characters, decent plots, a huge dose of good gameplay and we’ll be happy.

Happy Gaming